A Comparative Analysis Of Cultural Contents Between Advance With English (Yilin Edition) And New Standard English From The Perspective Of New Curriculum Standards

Economic globalization facilitates the flow of commerce,information and culture across the globe.Relying on this background,General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition,2020 Revised Edition)identifies cultural awareness as one of the core competences of English subject.Guiding students to be confident in Chinese culture,telling good Chinese stories,consciously identifying with excellent culture and transforming it into humanistic cultivation and behavior orientation are more important than before.As an important carrier of English knowledge and culture,cultural contents in English textbooks can greatly promote the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness.Based on Cheng’s(2002)textbook evaluation theory,this thesis takes the requirements of cultural types and cultural knowledge in General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards and the cultural region classified by Cortazzi & Jin(1999)as the theoretical basis to conduct a comparative study on cultural contents of the reading materials between Advance with English(Yilin Edition)and New Standard English.The thesis attempts to solve the following questions:(1)What cultural contents are included in the reading materials of two editions of textbooks?(2)What are the similarities and differences of cultural contents in the reading materials of two editions of textbooks?(3)How do teachers evaluate the cultural contents in the two editions of textbooks?This thesis selects Compulsory Book 1-3 of the two editions of textbooks as research subjects.Firstly,the textual analysis method is used to analyze the cultural types,cultural knowledge and cultural regions contained in the two editions of textbooks.Secondly,the comparative analysis method is used to explore the similarities and differences of cultural contents in the two editions of textbooks.Finally,teachers’ evaluations on cultural contents in the two editions of textbooks are learnt through interviews.The findings are as follows:(1)From the perspective of cultural types,the two editions of textbooks contain various spiritual culture and material culture and the proportion of spiritual culture is higher than material culture.From the perspective of cultural knowledge,the two editions of textbooks basically meet the requirements of cultural knowledge in General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards,but there are fewer articles about people’s behavior and reception in foreign countries,mainly in the UK and the USA.From the perspective of cultural region,the two editions of textbooks are constructed in a more diversified way.(2)The similarities between the two editions of textbooks are rich in cultural topics,focusing on spiritual culture and broadening students’ horizons.The differences are the followings.The target language culture accounts for a large proportion in Advance with English(Yilin Edition).It focuses on guiding students not only to perceive the beauty of English in the process of reading,but also to understand the relationship between language and culture through the comparison of English and Chinese expressions.New Standard English focuses on the introduction of excellent traditional Chinese culture and native culture accounts for a large proportion,which is conducive to the improvement of students’ cultural awareness and patriotism.(3)Interviews with teachers show that teachers generally agree on the importance of cultural teaching and hold positive attitudes towards cultural contents in the two editions of textbooks.Teachers point out the advantages of rich cultural themes in textbooks,but some cultural contents is divorced from students’ life,which is not conducive to students’ understanding of cultural connotations.Based on the analysis results,the following implications are concluded.(1)Teachers should constantly improve their professional quality and cultural literacy and use cultural contents to promote students’ cultural awareness in the teaching process.(2)Textbook compilers should reasonably integrate Chinese and western cultural contents to build up students’ cultural confidence.